6 Degrees of Separation: From The Naked Chef to Kids’ Cooking

Welcome back to 6 Degrees of Separation, where readers all begin with the same title and link it to six other books in whichever way our brains decide to make connections.

This month’s starting book is The Naked Chef  by Jamie Oliver.

Coincidentally, I am about to make chicken stock out of this very cookbook, but in terms of links, I cannot go past Brilliant Minds: 30 Dyslexic Heroes Who Changed Our World, written by Shannon Meyerkort together with stunning illustrations by Amy Blackwell.

The connection is because Jamie Oliver is one of the thirty people profiled in this book, all of whom grew up to use their dyslexia to their advantage and change the world around them. (You can read my interview with author Shannon Meyerkort and Book Notes about Brilliant Minds elsewhere on my blog.)

Another person profiled in this book is Jackie French, author of numerous historical fiction novels for younger readers as well as several picture books about wombats, including her new release, Diary of a Rescued Wombat: The Untold Story.

I also had a book about a wombat when I was a kid, this one by another well-known Australian author, Ruth Park. The Muddle-headed Wombat actually began as a radio serial, although I only ever knew it as a picture book.

Another Ruth Park book I remember reading as a kid was Playing Beattie Bow, which is a timeslip novel, in which the main character, Abigail, finds herself transported back to late 1800s Sydney.

I sometimes wonder whether it was that book which inspired Jackie French to write another timeslip novel, Somewhere Around the Corner, although the eras are different. This time, the main character Barbara ends up in Poverty Gully, a shanty town (or “susso” camp) Depression of the 1930s, when there was high unemployment, widespread poverty and often not enough to eat.

I hadn’t intended to create a Six Degrees of Separation for younger readers, but since I have, perhaps I’ll come full circle, albeit a long way from Poverty Gully, with a contemporary cookbook for kids: The Australian Women’s Weekly Kids’ Cooking. There’s a few recipes in there I wouldn’t mind trying out for myself!

Over to You

Where will six degrees of separation take you?

Head over to booksaremyfavouriteandbest to see where it took other readers.

Next month, the starting book is The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey.